The „refugee crisis“ has become a crisis of the EU. There is still no agreement among the EU Member States what will happen to the immigrants who enter the EU every day, the so called ‘refugee deal’ between the EU and Turkey is highly criticized. On the one hand EU citizens are welcoming and supportive, on the other hand they perceive refugees as a threat to internal security. An increase of votes for right-wing parties throughout Europe is visible (Law and Justice in Poland, UKIP in UK, AfD in Germany etc.) and violence against refugees and people who allegedly look ‘different’, is also increasing. Against this background universities are needed in order to enable students to take a differentiated stand. On the part of the EU Commission, an active and informed European citizenship is the key: “Education and training are crucial to prevent and tackle poverty and social exclusion and discrimination, and to build a foundation on which active citizenship rests” [“New priorities for education and training (ET2020)”, p.2]. The REFLECT LAB project intends to support universities, more specifically lecturers, to implement the currently discussed implementation of inquiry based learning. For this socio-scientific teaching/learning laboratories - REFLECT LABs - will be developed and tested. The objective is to establish an innovative course structure which fosters self-directed learning at Higher Education Institutions (HEI). Students do autonomous research in REFLECT LABs with socio-scientific methods towards pressing political and socially issues. Lecturers accompany and support this process and the critical discussion. As such the project sets a counterpoint to the widely criticized reduction of learning in HEI to sole knowledge transfer. TARGET GROUPS and RESULTS of the REFLECT LAB-Project:a) Lecturers at universitiesThey will be familiarized with the concept of inquiry based learning in the form of teaching/learning laboratories: By testing the REFLECT LABs at national level and by running the international professional development course. An IT-platform, which is accessible for all interested persons, serves for exchange, information and mutual support.b) StudentsLecturers will be trained so that their seminars will be structured in a more inquiry based way. The competence of differentiation, historical competence, competence of justice and reflection competence of students will be fostered adequately.c) PupilsFuture teachers are able to create inquiry based learning settings for their pupils, also at the extra-curricular learning environment university. As such the project contributes to offer a pre-university education at school.Further results:- A movie which gives concrete insights into a REFLECT-LAB, it documents the procedures and challenges of a teaching/learning lab, accessible at youtube.- Didactic-methodic guidelines for setting up and implement a REFLECT LAB, attractively designed with graphic novel drawingsThe project sets a specific socio-scientific accent, as topic like the so called refugee crisis will be in the focus of discussion and research. Thus cross-section competences will be generated, which are essential for all addressed target groups.The consortium consists of the applicant Leibniz University of Hannover (Institute of Civic Education), the University La Laguna (Spain), the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iasi (Romania), the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun (Poland) and the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). REFLECT-LAB has a duration of 30 months, November 2016 until April 2019.